Everything is Oll Korrect!https://itsollkorrect.com/blog
An eclectic bibliophile's journal...Thu, 25 Jul 2019 14:44:02 +0000en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.3https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/cropped-fumiyomogi-5-32x32.jpgEverything is Oll Korrect!https://itsollkorrect.com/blog
323224752926The King of Sportshttps://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/the-king-of-sports/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/the-king-of-sports/#respondThu, 25 Jul 2019 14:44:00 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4215The biggest surprise I’ve ever given my parents was last year when I told them that I was getting into professional wrestling. My online presence here and on Twitter reflects my real-life interests and hobbies closely, and as you can tell from a scan of my article and review index most of what I read and watch leans toward high culture. I’ll dip into popular culture with things like Devilmannow and then, but overall I’m more likely to be reading French poetry or something. I have little interest in sports generally, and most guys who are into wrestling started watching when they were young. I remember several friends in middle school talking about it, but I had little interest. So what happened?

Well, over the last few years I’ve noticed that a lot of people in my Twitter circles are into wrestling. Though hardly as visible as the Anime Right, Right-wing Pro Wrestling Twitter is surprisingly big even if its members tend to mask their power level. I had a few friends in particular who enjoyed it and when they gave an open invitation to watch an upcoming NXT event I figured I’d see what it’s all about. Needless to say, I enjoyed it, watched a few recommended matches from yesteryear, joined in with almost every group-watch this group of friends has done since, and eventually subscribed to NJPW’s (New Japan Pro Wrestling) online streaming service.

It’s sometimes difficult to explain why we enjoy the things we do, but for pro wrestling I can point to a few things. A big one is the social aspect, which is largely what got me to watch that first event. It’s fun watching something with friends and talking about a shared hobby. As for the wrestling itself, I love the athletic performance. Yes, it’s scripted, but so are most things on TV so who cares. These guys are doing incredible things in the ring and it’s great fun to watch.

Occasionally wrestling fans will defend their interest by appealing to the storylines, as in this popular video. I do appreciate having some context for a fight, but I don’t need any more than your typical sporting event has. Frankly, most of the storylines I’ve come across, including those summarised in that video, aren’t terribly impressive. One acquaintance pointed out that I got into the sport well after the high point of strong storylines. That may be true, but I can only judge the wrestling I have in front of me, so as things are if I want a deep plot I’ll read a book.

One thing about pro wrestling that I learned quickly is that there are a lot of promotions out there. The average American, from what I can tell, is only aware of the WWE, but even within the United States it’s far from alone. Incidentally, I’ve hardly watched any WWE content. I know a few people who follow their subsidiary NXT and I do watch their events with them once in a while, but I rarely hear anything good about WWE itself so I’ve never really bothered with it. I have watched some ROH (Ring of Honor) and everything so far from new promotion AEW (All Elite Wrestling), whose matches are wildly hit-and-miss. Throw in a few glimpses of Impact Wrestling and a live event with Metroplex Wrestling (MPX), a local promotion here in Dallas/Fort Worth, and that’s roughly my first year of wrestling viewing.

Mostly, I follow NJPW. I hear the cries of “weeb!” coming now, and I’m in no position to fully deny the accusation. That said, I’ve genuinely enjoyed their wrestling the most out of any promotion I’ve seen so far. My favourite wrestlers tend to be those with relatively simple styles, whose matches look more-or-less like an actual fight but with some added flair and machismo here and there. For those already familiar with the wrestling world, it’s probably enough to know that Ishii Tomohiro is my favourite wrestler. NJPW has a good variety of wrestlers and styles, staying grounded enough (by pro wrestling standards) that I can take it seriously while still having some extra flair. I don’t know any promotions that are overly serious, but one of AEW’s problems is that they get too silly at times.

Now, streaming is cool and all, but any sport or music fan knows that there’s nothing like a live performance, and I have attended two live events. The first was on July 6 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, which hosted the first night of NJPW’s G1 Climax, an annual tournament for heavyweight wrestlers. NJPW has had very few events in the United States and they are trying to break into the American market with more events already announced down the road. Most of those are nowhere near me, though, so the opportunity to see most of my favourite wrestlers live was a great experience, and most of the matches delivered on my high expectations. Really, there were only a couple downsides. One is that the crowd wasn’t as large or energetic as I’d expected. There were an oddly high number of empty seats, and though the people on the first level were into it, my section up in the terrace had all the energy of Jeb Bush. For instance, the people on the lower levels got up for two standing ovations, one for NJPW legend Jyushin Thunder Liger, who plans to retire in less than a year, and when Tanahashi Hiroki entered (after Tanahashi they remained standing for his opponent, Okada Kazuchika).…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/the-king-of-sports/feed/04215Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s “Rendez-Vous”https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/le-rendez-vous/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/le-rendez-vous/#respondThu, 18 Jul 2019 18:03:15 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4199For the sake of both practising my French and reading something I’m interested in, I’ve started reading through a book straightforwardly titled French Poetry of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Elliott M. Grant and first published in 1932 (my copy is a 1950 reprint). I haven’t worked through much of it yet, but I have a learned a few things about French poetry generally and now know a couple fine poets I hadn’t previously even been aware of.

One of those is Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, an actress who had a pair of intense but short-lived romances early in her life, which inspired some of her poems, before settling down with Mr. Valmore, another actor. Her first poems were published in 1813, with the poem below, “Le Rendez-vous,” appearing in 1825.
Here’s the French original:

Some of Desbordes-Valmore’s poems can be found in English, but I haven’t seen or read the in-print editions. There’s a translation of selected poems by Anna Evans, as well as an edition by French publisher Gallimard that supposedly has parallel text, but there’s no preview or translator name.

Now, I translated this poem for my own edification, but given Desbordes-Valmore’s obscurity in English I’ve decided to share my amateur translation here. Note, of course, that I’m still a student of this language, so neither satisfaction nor safety are guaranteed. Feel free to offer constructive criticism either here in the comments or on Twitter.

He waits for me! I don’t know what sadness
Is mingled with the haze of love in this moment.
My heart is stopped under my feeble hand;
The hour rings in the hamlet. I listen to it, and yet
He awaits.

He waits for me! why is it that in my hair
I cannot entwine the flowers he loves so much?
I’ve begun twice without finishing my finery,
I haven’t looked at a mirror… and yet,
He awaits.

He waits for me! Does happiness hide tears?
What must be invented to make him happy?
Have my bouquets and confessions lost their charm?
He’s sad, he sighs, he keeps to himself… and yet,
He awaits.

He waits for me! Will I return happier?
What fears are raised in my beating heart?
Ah! Should he find me less tender than fearful,
Ah! Should I weep, come, my mother… and yet,
He awaits!

I’ll add one final note here, which is that I have a new appreciation for translators of poetry. I played around with the phrasing for the best effect and most natural expression in English, but made no serious attempt at maintaining a rhyme scheme or strict metre. Perhaps I’ll revisit this down the road once I have more experience under my belt.

I do intend to translate more; again mostly for my edification because looking at a work this closely forces one to fully understand the poem, whereas merely reading it allows one to easily settle for getting the gist of it. Expect to see those pop up here occasionally, ideally with gradually improving quality.…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/le-rendez-vous/feed/04199The Happy Game of Mahjonghttps://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/the-happy-game-of-mahjong/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/the-happy-game-of-mahjong/#respondMon, 15 Jul 2019 15:56:57 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4194It’s hard to remember, but I’m pretty sure I first learned about mahjong (not mahjong solitaire) in the same way I’ve learned about most things in my life, Japanese cartoons. It looked interesting so when I saw a mahjong set for sale at a Half Price Books years ago I went ahead and bought it, got a book on mahjong, and never learned how to play. I didn’t know anyone who played and the mahjong software selection is bad enough now and was even worse then.

My interest was rekindled a few months ago after playing gin rummy for a while and one of my Twitter friends mentioned that he’d learned the basics of mahjong by thinking of it as essentially a rummy game. After all, the premise is that you’re forming tiles into sets, either sequences (e.g., 1-2-3 of the same suit) or three or four of a kind to form a winning hand. I re-read my book, managed to find a decent mahjong iOS app to practice with, and even found a group in my area to play with IRL.

Now, before going further, I’ll just offer a brief explanation of what mahjong is. You have a set of tiles (144 in a Chinese set, more or less in other styles) consisting of three suits (bamboo, circles, and characters, equivalent to playing card suits) numbered 1-9, and honours tiles. There are four of each tile, e.g., there are four of the east wind honour tile, four of the one of bamboo, etc. The game is played with four players and on each turn you draw one tile and discard one, trying to form sets of three or four tiles (similar to rummy, as said above) and eventually melding all of your tiles into a winning hand. You can also claim other players’ discards. There’s more than that, of course, but that should be enough for now. Tom Sloper can help you out if you want to know more.

With that out of the way, one issue that a few people have brought up to me is that they’re interested in mahjong but aren’t really sure how to go about learning to play. I’m still a beginner since I’ve only played for a few months now, but my method was to read Tom Sloper’s book The Red Dragon & the West Wind, which covers both Chinese Office and American style mahjong. This was the same one I bought years ago, and it’s very helpful. After that, I tried out several different mahjong apps and programs but settled on an iOS app called Let’s Mahjong, which is also available for Android. It’s almost the only software of its kind that has a decent aesthetic, single-player and online multiplayer, and doesn’t require you to make an account, buy “tokens” of one kind or another, or any other such nonsense.

If you’re wanting to learn, that’s a good way to do it. If there’s a mahjong group in your area, you may also want to get in touch with them to see if they can teach you.

What about other software? Well, the only one I could see using is MyJongg, which is for American style. Mahjong Time has an actual leaderboard which Let’s Mahjong lacks and has tournaments for real money, but an ugly aesthetic. That’s also true of Red Mahjong, which is an offshoot of Games Colony. Finally, there’s Four Winds Mahjong which actually does look and play well but the full version costs €30 and you can’t play online.

There are also a lot of books about mahjong out there, more than I’d expected given that mahjong isn’t terribly well-known in the United States. Sloper’s is the best for learning to play, but David Pritchard’s Teach Yourself Mahjong is also a good resource, and includes a section on strategy for once you’ve learned the basics. David H. Li’s The Happy Game of Mah-Jong, which has such a good title I stole it, is a pleasant read but not as good for learning to play. He does have some good commentary on several sample hands, though, as well as a lot to say about mahjong etiquette. He’s a big proponent of keeping the rules and scoring hands simple, and his chapter on etiquette is a good addition for those planning to play in-person and not just online.

The Great Mahjong Book, by Jelte Rep, has a lot of interesting information and pictures for those already into mahjong, but probably won’t be of great use to those who just want a helping hand in learning to play. Dr. Chung Wu’s An Advanced System for Playing Mah Jong spends a lot of time describing and defending a new scoring system for the game, basically making him an opposite of David H. Li, but he also includes some good commentary on sample hands and advice for strategy. Finally, there’s Dr. Tong Seng Tjoa’s Mah Jong Fun, which is a short book aimed at teaching beginners how to play but isn’t as useful for that purpose as Sloper or Pritchard. I did notice that Drs. Tjoa and Wu were both medical doctors who wrote about mahjong as essentially amateurs, which I actually like because it’s old-school and charming. If that’s not enough mahjong literature for you, Tom Sloper has you covered.

So that’s all great, but the real fun of any board or card game is playing with other people.…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/the-happy-game-of-mahjong/feed/04194What’s the News, Where ya Been?https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/whats-the-news-where-ya-been/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/07/whats-the-news-where-ya-been/#commentsThu, 11 Jul 2019 15:00:36 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4189Yes, there is wind left in my soul, though I am growing old. If you’re wondering about the lack of updates, it comes down to what I talked about last May. I’m working full time, going to grad school part-time, and through May had an internship at a local library, as well, and am still volunteering there once per week. Of course, I also have hobbies outside of blogging that I enjoy keeping up with.

Frankly, I also haven’t had as much to write about recently. Most of the books and movies I’ve watched over the past few months have been James Bond material, which I don’t have a lot to say about though I may do a write-up on my take on the series so far. I’ve also been playing mahjong and watching wrestling and I don’t have the experience and expertise to turn this into a mahjong or wrestling blog, though I’ll likely write a little about them at some point.

So what to do? My idea is to do a short write-up for each of these things I have been doing, but my only reservation is that for years now this has been a review blog, and this move would basically turn it into The Pillow Blog of Cheshire_Ocelot, something of a personal journal. That would be a sharp turn in subject matter, but it’s either that or not having any updates at all for a long while. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Recently, while shelving books in my library’s children’s section, I noticed a picture book with an especially striking cover and was somewhat surprised to see the title, Moby Dick. Herman Melville’s Great American Novel is hardly something I expected to find on the kid’s fiction shelves, but I was curious about how it would be adapted so I checked it out.

So, how did reteller Geraldine McCaughrean do it? One thing to note is that once you strip away Melville’s copious material about whales and whaling it’s not terribly difficult to then further abridge the story to a hundred-page adventure. It’s been a very long time since I’ve read the original, but by my memory the outline of all the major events are present and given in language that is appropriately simplified, but not dumbed-down. As a result, even some of the novel’s themes and philosophising survive. Take the first few paragraphs, for example:

There is a whale in the sea, as white as a ghost, and it haunts me. It haunts me on winter nights, when the sky tumbles like a grey sea, and drifts of snow hump their backs at me. It haunts me in summer, when the sun overhead turns the grass sea-green, and the almond blossom rears up white over my head.

Sometimes, when I’m afloat in sleep, like a drowned sailor, he swims towards me – a nightmare all in white, jaws gaping, and I wake up screaming and salt-water wet with sweat. Somewhere out there in the bottomless oceans lives Moby Dick, a great white winter of a whale, and I shiver at the thought of him. Even in summer.

Call me Ishmael. It might be my name. Then again it might not. In my devout, church-going part of the world, it is usual for parents to name their children after characters in the Bible. Maybe mine did. There again, a man can always choose a new name, later in life, to suit his nature and experience. I call myself Ishmael, like that despised son of Abraham cast out into the wilderness places of the world. He may have lived apart from other men, but God was with him in the wilderness, even so, and heard him when he cried. God hears. That’s the meaning of Ishmael. A man could be called worse. ‘Ahab’, for instance.

Three paragraphs, and clearly, though this looks like a picture book given its size and many illustrations, it’s not at all what one typically expects from children’s literature. I’m not sure how much of this is taken directly from Melville, but I don’t see any exact correlations from the novel, or even near correlation, at least from the beginning aside from the famous “Call me Ishmael.”

McCaughrean pulls no punches, either, as characters prepare for death and die, as Ahab’s obsession grows worse, as the ship meets its doom. We even get to see the word “damned” a couple times, which is always cool in a kids’ book. Notice how even in just the passage above she repeats motifs on the colour white, how the white humps of snow recall Moby Dick’s white hump, how the grass isn’t just green but specifically sea-green, and careful attention to the sound of words, like the rhyme of sea/me in the second sentence or the alliteration in, for instance, “screaming and salt-water wet with sweat” (with another rhyme in wet/sweat for good measure).

That said, if you want the full Moby Dick experience your best bet is of course still to read the original novel. The author does a stellar job presenting the story to an audience too young for the source material but still ready for serious literature, but the main appeal for adults are the wonderful illustrations by Victor G. Ambrus. Seeing Ambrus’s work in an edition of the full novel would be something I’d buy instantly.

Some will likely question whether we really need children’s adaptations of classic literature. In general, I think it is best simply to give children books appropriate for their age and let them grow into the classics. However, I do make some exception for mythology, and Moby Dick is very much part of American mythology. Enough so that I think that, given that most Americans will never read the original novel, it’s good to fill our children’s imaginations with some version of this tale.

Most books I see in the library’s children’s section are not childlike so much as childish. Having a much higher quality story available, then, is very much to be welcomed.

…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/05/moby-dick-the-picture-book/feed/04171Dante: The Story of his Lifehttps://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/05/dante-the-story-of-his-life/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/05/dante-the-story-of-his-life/#respondWed, 01 May 2019 13:00:48 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4154I like to style myself a literary omnivore, but one genre I’ll admit I seldom touch is biography. I’ve read one on Robert E. Lee, and back in high school and college I read some biographies of various rock bands, but I preferred those that focused primarily on their music and secondarily on the musicians’ personal lives. A recent review, of The Printed Homer, included some biographical speculation, but ultimately one can’t really write a biography of a man about whom we know so little for certain that we’re not even sure if he was one dude or multiple dudes.

Marco Santagata stands on firmer ground in his biography of Dante Alighieri (translated from Italian by Richard Dixon), titled simply Dante: The Story of His Life, though he did run into some difficulties of his own. Typically I like to start reviews on a positive note, but any biography of Dante will have two significant problems to deal with, and though Santagata’s book is quite good overall one does need to be aware of them.

First, Dante’s life is inextricably tied up with Florentine politics. Readers of his Divine Comedy will undoubtedly have noticed how many contemporary political figures appear, and multiple works after La Vita Nuova, such as Convivio and Monarchia, at least touch on political theory or practice in some way. This means that a huge portion of Santagata’s book is spent discussing the ins and outs of Florentine political theatre and that of Italy more broadly. For those keenly interested in Italian history or who are just political junkies this won’t be a problem at all, but anyone expecting a sort of “real life novel” style of biography will find themselves skimming pages at a time of explanations of shifting alliances, ideologies, and political manoeuvring.

Second, there are large gaps in what we know about Dante. Obviously, there’s enough for Santagata to write a few hundred pages about him, but he must frequently qualify even matters of fact like where Dante was living at a given time, or when a particular event happen, with “probably,” “likely,” “must have,” etc. For example, we aren’t completely sure how many children Dante had; at least three, but maybe four. As another example, we don’t know how Dante was educated because not only is there almost no information about his childhood, we don’t even know what a typical education looked like in Florence because there is no documentation of it.

When Dante went into exile, since he was a condemned man in Florence he could not travel freely around Italy because, as Santagata explains, “he no longer enjoyed the protection of Florence. He could be killed legitimately, and therefore with impunity, by anyone.” So how did Dante manage to travel between cities?

These considerations give credence to the idea that, in exchange for hospitality and maybe some gratuity, Dante might have carried out some occasional services for the Della Scala family. If, among these services, there had been some diplomatic assignment, this would then explain how, equipped with a safe-conduct, he could have moved freely around the region.

Note the “might have” in that paragraph.

Fortunately, Santagata handles these obstacles well. His descriptions of Italy’s political scene are clear and the tedium is kept to a minimum. He also makes clear where in the biography he’s writing on solid ground, when he’s speculating, and when there’s just not any good information available. Those who really like to dig deeply in their history (and check that the author isn’t BSing them) will be pleased to find a substantial number of citations and a bibliography.

One thing I do appreciate about Santagata is that he ties Dante’s literary output in with the biography often, and uses his writings and his life to illuminate each other. This is partly of necessity, since all of Dante’s work has at least some element of autobiography, but the author does a fine job both as a historian and literary analyst when called for. For example, here he explains the circumstances that prompted Dante to write De vulgari eloquentia while travelling between cities:

Dante realizes that the Italian ruling classes have no common language. In the past it had been Latin, but now he has to admit – and as author of elaborate diplomatic letters written on behalf of the Coalition of the Whites, he was well aware of it – that “princes, barons, knights, and many other noble people” are people who “speak the vernacular, are not learned”; they know no Latin. From being a language of communication for the upper classes, Latin had become a specialist language, the prerogative of university academics and the higher professional ranks. For these cultural elites, whom Dante identifies as “lawyers, doctors, and almost all clerics” (Conv. III XI 10[…]), the purpose of learning Latin is not the pursuit of individual “happiness” and the common good, but that of advantage and gain […]. In short, the direction that high culture was taking through the university system was of no use for rebuilding a common fabric for the scattered Italian nobility.

One thing I’d wondered about before reading this book was what Dante’s financial situation was like after his exile from Florence. Santagata confirms that as of 1304, and likely much of the rest of his life, that he did not have a regular income, and keep in mind that all of his property was stuck in Florence.…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/05/dante-the-story-of-his-life/feed/04154Go Nagai’s Devilmanhttps://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/04/go-nagais-devilman/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/04/go-nagais-devilman/#respondFri, 26 Apr 2019 18:22:14 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4144Go Nagai has long been an artist I’ve been aware of and was interested in perhaps checking out someday, but I only got around to doing so recently. My interest was piqued last year when I watched Yuasa Masaaki’s anime adaptation of Nagai’s comic Devilman, titled Devilman Crybaby. Yuasa is always excellent and this anime was no exception, and as soon as I saw that Seven Seas had published the first half of the original in an omnibus edition I picked it up right away. They released the second and final omnibus late last year and I recently finished it and, though it’s been a while since I last reviewed a comic, I figured I’d share a few thoughts about it.

The protagonist is high schooler Fudo Akira, who isn’t exactly a wimp but definitely doesn’t have much backbone. His friend, rich genius Ryo, asks for his help with something and takes him to a rave crazier than a Chick tract, where crap happens and he ends up merging with a demon, making him part-devil and part-man, Devilman. So, now that he has awesome powers (and a far more aggressive personality) Ryo explains that demons are roaming the earth seeking to destroy humanity, and asks for his help in stopping them. Those who’ve seen Crybaby will know what’s up, and those who are new to Devilman are in for a hell of a ride. As one may expect from only two omnibus volumes, the story is short and keeps up a brisk pace throughout. The first 2/3 or so is more-or-less episodic, with most chapters using action scenes to nudge the plot forward, though a handful of time-travel themed chapters are, frankly, just filler and Crybaby was right to exclude them. The last third is by far the most intense, with betrayals, characters dying left-and-right, and leading up to a contender for the bleakest ending I’ve ever seen in a work of fiction.Oh, and for those wondering, yes the book is as full of nudity and violence as you’d expect if you’ve seen Crybaby (or if you know who Go Nagai is). The adaptation ramped it up to 2018 standards and beyond, but was very much in the spirit of its source material.

The artwork is cartoony and old-fashioned, but mostly effective. I can’t decide if a more realistic approach would’ve suited it better or not; suspension of disbelief is generally easier with less realism, but the horror of what’s really going on in this plot isn’t really expressed by the sometimes goofy artwork. For the first part of the story it doesn’t make much difference, as it’s essentially episodic monster-of-the-week stuff, but when Akira himself gives the reader a warning that things are about to get serious 2/3 through there’s more of a disconnect between the plot and the art. I’ll let those more familiar with the ins and outs of the art world handle the details on this, though.

The bleakness of the ending does give me some pause in recommending it, but in Nagai’s original telling it doesn’t feel quite as brutal as the recent adaptation – that, or it’s less powerful because I expected it this time. Either way, if you’re looking for an uplifting story you’ll need to look elsewhere. I should also mention that the general flow of the story could’ve used a little work. I already mentioned that a few chapters could easily have been cut entirely, while other plot points and characters would have benefited from some more time and exploration. I’d be curious to know how much of the plot was planned out – Devilman was originally conceived as an anime and Nagai worked on both, and he wanted to make the manga a more mature version of the story. In fact, the two ran side-by-side as the manga began serialisation only a month before the anime debuted. I’d assume that the ending was planned, but I don’t know if the weaker chapters are just filler or if they were thematically important plot points that missed the mark.

Speaking of themes, Nagai intended for Devilman to have an anti-war message; some of this comes through with the tyrannical and counterproductive government reaction to demonic attacks, and the “devilman” concept as an analogy to the draft. More interesting is the exploration of the dark side of human nature once the general public becomes aware of the existence of demons, and the paranoia and brutality that ensues. Akira himself is also a tragic figure, whose noble desire to help everyone has a terrible consequence.

Go Nagai is such a major figure in manga history that anyone who takes the medium seriously should be at least somewhat acquainted with his work. A few caveats aside, I’d say that Devilman has aged well, and is worth reading even aside from any historical interest. It’s good enough, in fact, that I’ll likely check out the other adaptations and, perhaps, review them at some point as well.…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/04/go-nagais-devilman/feed/04144The Printed Homer: A 3000 Year Publishing and Translation History of the Iliad and the Odysseyhttps://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/04/the-printed-homer-a-3000-year-publishing-and-translation-history-of-the-iliad-and-the-odyssey/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/04/the-printed-homer-a-3000-year-publishing-and-translation-history-of-the-iliad-and-the-odyssey/#respondWed, 17 Apr 2019 21:31:23 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4136Philip H. Young’s The Printed Homer: A 3000 Year Publishing and Translation History of the Iliad and the Odyssey is an odd book to recommend to laymen because about half of it will be useful only to a very focused class of specialists. The other half, though, is of interest to any Classicist, professional or amateur, and is enough to justify buying the whole package.

The specialist half can be dealt with very briefly. Young has compiled a comprehensive list of every known printing of Homer’s works (including those spuriously attributed to him, such as the Hymns) from the first example in 1470 to 2000. It’s an impressive undertaking and I’m sure it’s very helpful for historians who specifically study historical interest in and treatment of the Homeric texts. For laymen such as myself, though, I find it hard to imagine a plausible scenario where this part of the book might be useful.

The rest of the book, though, discusses a range of material that I found fascinating and enlightening as an introduction to the Homeric Question, how the texts were created and transmitted, and how Homer was received, interpreted, and admired from ancient Greece to modernity, as well as Young’s own defense of why Homer is worth studying. I’ll just give a sample of each chapter.
The first chapter asks, “Who was Homer?” This chapter is also the shortest because, ultimately, we have no idea, as Young explains, “It is clear from their writings that the historical Greeks did not know any true facts about the life of this poet Homer, and they also did not have a good idea of when he had lived, simply assigning him to some past era before their own time,” despite various authors’ speculations. There are few reliable references to Homer prior to the sixth century B.C., but many references do appear after that point, such as “an inscription from the ancient Athenian Agora dateable to ca. 475 [B.C.].” There were also several cities which tried to claim him as a native of their town, with little or no real evidence. Young does address the obvious strategy of looking for hints in the poems attributed to Homer. His epics were written in the Ionic Greek dialect, which points to him having lived in the Greek East. He also seems to have been familiar with the geography around Troy and the Mediterranean, as long as we allow for some poetic license.

The second chapter addresses the creation of the Homeric text. Young poses four primary questions: Was “Homer” a single man who composed the Iliad and Odyssey, or were they created by some other process? When were the epics composed, when were they written down, and when did a standard text emerge? What era do the stories take place in? How much of the poems are historical and how much fictional?

Let me pause for a moment to note that, for those approaching Homer’s work for the first time, I recommend not worrying too much about these issues. Focus first on the text in front of you and enjoy it as a work of literature. For those who already love Homer, though, it is natural to wonder about such things, and of course it is the work of historians to attempt to answer them. (I’ll also note that I’ve written a little about how to approach Homer on a first reading).

Now, those familiar with the epics and with Greek history will notice a number of oddities with the works. For example, in the Iliad men will be killed in one book, then appear alive later on. Cultural practices, military technologies and tactics, and other things are a mix of disparate periods of Greek history. Some passages include language forms from much earlier Greek dialects. Some passages are simply of inferior quality than others. How do we explain all this? Some scholars have argued that they’re evidence that the epics are actually separate works edited together; Young cites Friedrich August Wolf as an early modern proponent of this theory, who attempted to divide the poems into these earlier parts in his 1795 book Prolegomena ad Homerum.

Another possibility discussed at some length is that the oddities are the result of the epics’ origin as oral poetry. Young summarises the work of various scholars and points out that oral poetry often uses recurring lines and epithets just as Homer does, for example. Oral poets may also repeat certain passages either purposely or accidentally, and the conservatism of oral poetry could explain the presence of old-fashioned language. On the other hand, oral poems are rarely of such epic length, though again, it’s possible that the poems were divided into separate poems that were performed individually, not all together.

Beginning in the third chapter, “The Homeric Text in Classical Antiquity,” Young spends the rest of the first half of the book discussing Homer’s reception and reputation in various periods of Western history. It’s well-known that the ancients revered Homer, attributing to him extraordinary insight into topics from ethics to geography to military strategy. That said, Homer did have his critics. Xenophanes criticised his overly human depiction of the gods as impious, and Heraclitus “attacked the philosophical authority and other poets.” Homer’s most famous critic must be Plato; in the Republic he discusses poetry at length and concludes that the works of Homer and other poets are, ultimately, impious and encourage undesirable beliefs and behaviours, and should therefore be banned, despite admitting that Homer is excellent in other ways.…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/04/the-printed-homer-a-3000-year-publishing-and-translation-history-of-the-iliad-and-the-odyssey/feed/04136The Bowl of Tears and Solacehttps://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/03/the-bowl-of-tears-and-solace/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/03/the-bowl-of-tears-and-solace/#respondMon, 11 Mar 2019 01:15:47 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4132Not that long ago the common complaint around the Right (broadly defined) was that we needed more dissident artists and authors. Over the past year or two, though, that situation has been reversing itself and it feels like everyone who’s anyone now has a novel coming out. I’ve reviewed Neovictorian’s book Sanitypreviously, and Neovictorian himself has reviewed Sanctionand The Brave and the Bold, while in short fiction there’s enough material for Logos Club to offer a weekly overview of it all. Now, to call all of this “Right-wing” is to sell it short; most of it is not explicitly ideological, and in general these authors are most interested in being artists first, philosophers second, if at all. Despite that, though, given Leftist dominance of traditional publishers the people most likely to be drawn to independent outlets and self-publishing are disproportionately going to be Right-of-Centre, whether that means Right-Libertarian, Throne and Altar Monarchist, or someone in between.

So, let’s take a look at a recent entry in this unexpectedly crowded field, Garth Ogle’s science fiction novel The Bowl of Tears and Solace, published late last year by Saints Edward Media. In short, it was the best graphic novel I’ve read in a long time.

“Wait,” you might be thinking, “isn’t this a regular prose novel?” Yes. That’s the novel’s strength and weakness. I like Ogle’s style, the ideas are intriguing, and the book is full of strong individual scenes. I also found the plot very difficult to follow, and the many action scenes in particular would have been better served in a visual medium like film or comics. To take an example from early in the book:

“It’s private,” I say. “Can we get to – ” but I am cut off by a sudden –

THUD

I rush to the door. This being a back street in the middle of the afternoon, I wonder how a tram accident could have happened. But then I see it.

In the middle of the road, just aside from the rail on the left, is a massive, gray– bug. It is, as best as I can tell, on top of a man, who does not seem to be benefiting from the exercise.

The handful of pedestrians just watch, as in a dream, seeming to me, perhaps, to wonder if it is real. Then I see something happen very quickly.

Across the street, on the right side of the road, I see a woman, with her hair up in a ponytail and dark glasses on. In a moment she is in shadow and there is a bright halo around her. With a motion too quick for me to see, she has drawn a rod and leaping, struck the insect on the back. The air itself shudders oddly with the blow, as if gravity itself were disrupted by the end of her rod. The insect collapses, bloodless and crumpled, and she, returning to normal begins doing something furtively with her handheld computer.

As I watch, in a matter of minutes, a golden man descends from the sky, and the woman throws off her glasses and unbinds her hair.

“CONGRATULATIONS!” he bellows, to the passersby. “YOU’VE BEEN VISITED BY THE DEFENDERS OF G-1! LET ME TELL YOU WHAT YOU’VE WON!”

I blink and turn back to the proprietor, who is idly dusting a glass case.

“I think a man just died out there.”

“No, it’s all a show. They keep it interesting here,” he replies impatiently.

It’s a striking scene, but one that loses most of its force in print. The novel is full of scenes along these lines, and if you have a stronger imagination than I do and can fully visualise them you’ll probably enjoy the book. Again, even I enjoyed most of the novel in spite of the action coming up short for me, because following the threads of what exactly this “show” is all about, as well as the plot of our protagonist discovering an almost miraculous cure and its consequences, was enough to hold my interest the whole way through. Even some of the action stands up; there are a few points where a character has a prophetic dream of the near-future, and Ogle successfully builds and maintains a lot of tension as he prepares to deal with the upcoming event.

If I’m being vague about the plot, it’s largely because the mystery is part of the appeal and I don’t want to spoil anything. Also, I struggled somewhat to follow it, especially at the rather abstract climax. I suppose I could talk about the themes, which I’ve seen the author mention on Twitter, but since I had to read the book over a longer period of time than usual for me I must have missed the connecting threads and didn’t get it.

So, do I recommend The Bowl of Tears and Solace? If you’re a voracious reader and are looking for something contemporary, sure, it’s worth a shot. If you’re a more casual reader and need to really pick your shots, I think there’s enough here that it’s definitely worth looking forward to Ogle’s next novel.…

]]>https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/03/the-bowl-of-tears-and-solace/feed/04132Twenty-Second Friend: François Villon, “Ballade des dames du temps jadis”https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/03/twenty-second-friend-francois-villon-ballade-des-dames-du-temps-jadis/
https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/2019/03/twenty-second-friend-francois-villon-ballade-des-dames-du-temps-jadis/#respondWed, 06 Mar 2019 15:45:13 +0000https://itsollkorrect.com/blog/?p=4128In ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound wrote that a man can’t fully understand poetry if he reads only one language. Later on, when listing authors important to the development of English poetry he also included a few Frenchman. With both those points in mind, I thought it would be appropriate to include a few French poets even though the focus of this list is on English authors. So, today we’ll meet M. François Villon.

M. Villon is a pseudonym for François de Montcorbier or François des Loges, who was born in Paris in 1431. He led such an eventful life that it’s worth reading at least an article about him, but in short he spent much of his life in prison and banishment, for such crimes as robbery and killing a priest during a fight between them and some drinking friends, and traveling around France. The last we hear of him, he was on death row for his part in a brawl, but that sentence was commuted to ten years banishment from Paris by the Parlement in January 1563. What happened to him next is unkown.

As for his poetry, I’m not familiar enough with French verse to offer HSOs of my own so I’ll have to lean on others’ accounts. His poetry is technically impressive with difficult metres and rhyme schemes, and he was quite knowledgeable of the world of poetry past and present. It seems that his medieval university education did indeed take hold, despite his raucous lifestyle. His best-known work is the long poem Le Testament, which expresses his fears and laments his wasted youth. Let’s take a look at a selection from Le Testament, “Ballade des dames du temps jadis” (“Ballade of Ladies of Time Gone By”).

Now, I’m sure all of you know French, but just in case you’re a little rusty, here it is in English, as translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

Tell me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where’s Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
Only heard on river and mere,—
She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Where’s Héloise, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
(From Love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you, is the Queen
Who willed that Buridan should steer
Sewed in a sack’s mouth down the Seine? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
With a voice like any mermaiden,—
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
And that good Joan whom Englishmen
At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
Mother of God, where are they then? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Except with this for an overword,—
But where are the snows of yester-year?

This is excellent stuff, and I love the line “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!” Snow works so well because it is beautiful while it lasts, but of course, it doesn’t last for long. The line “La royne Blanche comme ung lys” is pretty clever, though it doesn’t quite work in English (a literal translation would be something like “The Queen White as a lilly”). This poem is also a perfect length, long enough for him to list several examples of famous women from times past (and keep in mind, one theme of Le Testament is death and old age) and make his point, but a list like this could get tedious if it went on for much longer.

M. Villon may be the first Frenchman we meet, but he won’t be the last.…